A social network service is an online service, platform or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people (e.g., those who share interests and/or activities). A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as by e-mail and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.
In a multi-tenant social networking environment, where a tenant is an organization, a user of an organization may want to engage in collaborative activity (e.g., chatting, participating in an online meeting, sharing files, entering data in forums and wikis, community membership) with users who are visitors from other organizations.
Typically, when a user is visiting the environment or tenant space of a different organization, the visitor will not be able to peruse through the host organization's employee directory, such as the profiles of the employees of the host organization. Neither will the visitor be able to view the network contacts of any user when visiting the environment of the host organization, even the network contacts of other users that are employees of the same organization who are also visiting the environment of the host organization, due to privacy concerns by the host organization. For example, if a first user, who is an employee of a first organization, engages in collaborative activity with a second user of a second organization, the first user will not be able to view the network contacts of other users, including other users that are employees of the first organization who are also engaged in collaborative activity with the second organization.
As a result of not allowing visitors to view the network contacts of any user when visiting the environment of the host organization, even the network contacts of other users that are employees of the same organization, an opportunity is missed to allow the visitor to identify contacts that are also known by other employees of the same organization as well as to expand his/her network contacts in the visiting organization. For example, other employees of the same organization may know other users in the visiting organization that may be used to expand the visitor's network contacts in the visiting organization.